EIGHT YEARS AGO this site was born. This was motivated by the Microsoft-Novell deal. The deal heralded the beginning of Microsoft’s patent assault on GNU/Linux and Free software — an assault that continues unabated to this date.

Novell’s virtual assets are now being passed to a new entity called Micro Focus, which is Microsoft's "Partner of the Year". This has just been finalised [1] and there is press coverage about it [2,3], including some interviews [4,5,6,7], reviews [8,9], and analysis from the OSI’s President [10,11] amid SUSECon 2014 [12] that showcased and emitted some technical announcements [13-16] (not many, mostly one that’s actually significant).

SUSE has certainly received a lot of coverage over the past week (while my wife and I moved between homes), but one must remember that SUSE is not free from Microsoft; if anything, now it is more Microsoft-tied than before. People must continue to boycott SUSE, not just Novell (or what’s left of it). Attachmate did not give SUSE full independence, only symbolic. Just look who manages SUSE. It’s not independence. With Microsoft’s “Partner of the Year” in charge of SUSE we can expect to see the same pro-Microsoft agenda and sickening relationships inside SUSE (OOXML, Hyper-V, Mono and so on). It’s about Microsoft controlling and profiting from GNU/Linux, hoping to put Red Hat or Debian at peril.

For those who are still in denial over Micro Focus’s role in SUSE, read [17]. Microsoft’s “Partner of the Year” is now in charge. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. Micro Focus International Completes Merger with the Attachmate Group

2. Free as in Beer, SUSE News, and 7 Years Uptime

   The SUSE parent company Attachmate and Micro Focus merger is now complete and Sam Varghese has several interviews from SUSECon today.

3. Wake Up Lil SUSE, Minty Goodness, and Caine Mutiny

4. Lock-in a danger to open source, says SUSE official

   If there is one aspect in the open source world that can prove detrimental, it is companies that indulge in lock-in to the extent possible, according to Gerald Pfeifer, senior director of product management at SUSE.

   Speaking to iTWire on the sidelines of SUSECon 2014, the third annual conference of the Germany-based SUSE Linux, which is being held in Orlando, Florida this week, Pfeifer (lictured above) did not mention any companies by name, though he did make a passing reference to Oracle.

5. Enterprise desktop has its own niche, says SUSE project head

   One aspect of GNU/Linux that does not figure much in discussion when commercial Linux is the topic, is the desktop. SUSE Linux is no exception.

6. A brilliant mind: SUSE’s kernel guru speaks

   The man who in every sense sits at the nerve centre of SUSE Linux has no airs about him. At 38, Vojtěch Pavlík is disarmingly frank and often seems a bit embarrassed to talk about his achievements, which are many and varied.

   He is every bit a nerd, but can be candid, though precise. As director of SUSE Labs, it would be no exaggeration to call him the company’s kernel guru. Both recent innovations that have come from SUSE – patching a live kernel, technology called kGraft, and creating a means for booting openSUSE on machines locked down with secure boot, have been his babies.

7. Chasing the Z/Linux market: A SUSECon attendee’s tale

   When Roger Williams wanted to increase the market for ShadowDisk/Z, a product made by the little Gainesville-based company he works for, he headed to meet the experts, those at SUSE Linux which has something like three-quarters of the market for all Z/Linux customers.

8. OpenSUSE 13.2 review – Back in the game!

   Finally. After three and a half years of sucking, openSUSE is a top performance once again. This is an excellent all-around distribution, and it comes with some neat solutions both over and underneath the hood. You can’t deny its amazing looks, and with the 13.2 release, performance, functionality and stability are back.

   Now, openSUSE 13.2 has its problems. The screenshot thingie, subvolume handling, missing Samba printing option, plus that one inexplicable crash, which is probably the most serious item. And because of it, the final grade shall be lower. But all combined, the woes pale against the quality and general goodness radiating from this edition. Really, if you ignore the initial setup, and the one time freeze, there’s very little not to like about openSUSE 13.2. I’m pleased. And feeling somewhat fanboyish. But this is good.

   Anyhow, if you’re looking for a non-Ubuntu family release that can offer you a great blend and balance between looks, modernity, functionality, stability, and performance, then you have several worthy candidates to consider. CentOS is one of them, and now openSUSE has returned, mighty and strong, and sanity has been restored into the distro world, where for many years, there’s been an almost total dominance by Mint and Ubuntu, with everyone else lagging behind. OpenSUSE 13.2 is definitely worth testing and exploring. Final grade, something like 9/10, and this is with a whole 0.5 point taken off. So it’s good. Do it.

9. Meeting the green lizard of openSUSE 13.2

   In the first week of November the openSUSE team launched the latest version of its operating system. The project’s release announcement highlights such new features as faster boot times, KDE 4.14, GNOME 3.14 and a technical preview of KDE’s Plasma 5.1 desktop. The new version of openSUSE has undergone some visual changes and presents us with new artwork and a more streamlined system installer. The distribution also offers updated versions of Linux containers and Docker. The project’s configuration panel, YaST, underwent a major re-write last year and should now be faster. The project claims better integration with systemd too. Prior to installing or upgrading to openSUSE 13.2 I recommend reading the project’s release notes where we can find a list of known problems and workarounds.

10. Suse jumps into software-defined storage

    As its steady post-Novell recovery continues, Suse moves into enterprise software-defined storage

11. Little Suse wakes up, Linux shakes up

12. SUSECon 2014: Day One Highlights

    SUSECon 2014 kicked off in Orlando this week, with the company stressing an air of open communication and transparency with its partners befitting its commitment to the Linux open source platform.

13. SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching Now Available

    “In addition to increasing service availability by updating critical kernel patches without rebooting, and reducing the need for planned downtime by patching frequently, SUSE Linux Enterprise Live Patching preserves security and stability by applying up-to-date patches,” said Matthias Eckermann, senior product manager for SUSE. “It’s a fully open source solution that features zero-interruption interaction with the system and a familiar deployment method. It’s ideal for mission-critical systems, in-memory databases, extended simulations or quick fixes in a large server farm.”

14. Ceph-starter Suse to enter software-defined storage market

15. SUSE Brings Live Patching and Ceph Storage to Its Enterprise Linux

    Enterprise Linux vendor SUSE today made a series of announcements at its annual SUSEcon event, providing users with new patching, storage and cloud capabilities.

16. Philae Space Probe Landed on the Comet with the Help of SUSE

    The human race has sent a small probe called Philae to land on a comet and got it right the first time it tried. As expected, a Linux operating system has been involved in the success of the mission.

17. SUSE’s new owner does not see much change ahead

    The new owner of SUSE Linux does not intend to move the company from Nuremberg or change its method of operation in any substantial way, the chief executive told iTWire on Tuesday.

    [...]

    The deal has been ratified and is expected to be sealed on Thursday, 20 November.

Summary: OpenSUSE is not part of any commitment, except for SUSE’s; the impact of the Novell/SUSE acquisition casts uncertainty on the project’s future

YESTERDAY we quickly commented on the news that Micro Focus, a very strong British partner of Microsoft, is taking over SUSE and Novell. The British press put it like that:

Attachmate once earned the ire of the open source community for taking on Novell and then putting 882 patents in its Linux portfolio up for sale to a consortium backed by Microsoft.

Microsoft’s strategy remains the same. It is using patents to attack Linux and it is determined destroy, co-opt, assimilate, acquire, destroy, etc. Microsoft can only continue to ‘sell’ licences (for Windows, SUSE, etc.) if competition is gone and this is the reason Microsoft keeps making SUSE its own. SUSE is basically “Microsoft Linux”, which is why Microsoft keeps advertising it as the only ‘true’ GNU/Linux.

Swapnil Bhartiya, an OpenSUSE sympathiser, correctly says:

The merger will once again ruffle some features at SUSE and openSUSE which have been under continuous financial instability.

Bhartiya also covered the message sent to the mailing list of OpenSUSE (documented by LWN). It states:

Dear openSUSE Community,

As you might be aware, SUSE’s parent entity, the Attachmate Group has
entered into an agreement to merge with Micro Focus, a UK-based
enterprise software company. As the primary sponsor of the openSUSE
Project, SUSE’s President and General Manager, Nils Brauckmann has
contacted the openSUSE Board to share the following key points

”
* Business as Usual: There are no changes planned for the SUSE
business structure and leadership. There is no need for any action by
the openSUSE Project as a result of this announcement.

* Commitment to Open Source: SUSE remains passionately committed to
innovation through Open Source. This has always been the foundation of
our business and that will continue as we grow and innovate in new
areas.

* Commitment to openSUSE: SUSE is also fully committed to being a
sponsor and supporter of an open, highly independent and dynamic
openSUSE community and project. We are proud of openSUSE and greatly
value the collaborative relationship between SUSE and the openSUSE
community.

The combination of the Attachmate Group and Micro Focus creates a
larger, global enterprise software entity, operating at a greater
global scale. This provides an even stronger foundation for the
continued investment in SUSE and our continued innovation through Open
Source.”

The openSUSE Board would like to thank Nils and SUSE for this
reassuring statement. The Board is enthusiastic about the benefits of
the merger may bring to SUSE and ultimately also to our openSUSE
Project.

If anyone has any questions, there will be an opportunity to raise
them at tomorrow (Wednesdays) regular openSUSE Project Meeting at
15:00 UTC in #opensuse-project on the Freenode IRC network.

Regards,

The openSUSE Board

Notice how Brauckmann does not say anything at all about a commitment from Micro Focus to SUSE and OpenSUSE. He speaks of a SUSE commitment to OpenSUSE. That’s it. This is a classic non-denying denial, where what one neglects to say actually says quite a lot.

Michael Larabel’s interpretation is that “Richard Brown relayed a message on the behalf of SUSE’s President and General Manager, Nils Brauckmann, that basically everything is alive and well.”

That’s MBA speak. As it was put by Susan Linton: “The Attachmate Group, announced a merger with Micro Focus leaving openSUSE users nervous.”

This nervousness is why Brauckmann, by proxy, relayed some face-saving talking points. The acquisition seems imminent:

Micro Focus buying Novell, Suse Linux owner for $1.2 billion

[...]

Micro Focus expects the deal to close by November.

Our assessment is that changes are afoot. SUSE is now at the mercy of a strong ally of Microsoft, which is likely to keep SUSE or run SUSE only in a way that appeases Microsoft’s interests. █

Last week we were asked about Attachmate, which we no longer keep track of because Novell is pretty much dead and SUSE is not doing well. They are going extinct. The Xandros Web site is no longer even accessible and when it comes to SUSE, the community in particular, it is going down the same route. Well, judging by the declining volume of activity in OpenSUSE News, Greg K-H’s move to the Linux Foundation, the fact that community manager left (he works for ownCloud now) and now the departure of the chairman of the OpenSUSE board (more on that here), we think it is safe to treat SUSE as irrelevant, or not relevant enough for us to track. Here is the latest:

The openSUSE Board announced this morning that Vincent Untz has stepped down as the openSUSE Board Chairman.

Several days ago I spent some time looking at years’ worth of Novell news, Attachmate news, and SUSE news (I am still subscribed to dozens of feeds related to all those). This was done after a discussion in IRC. I am reluctant to bother with any of them because 1) there is not much news at all and 2) the news hardly relates to FOSS. Novell will go down the same route as Corel and SUSE will end up like Xandros. As for Xamarin, which was created after Novell/Attachmate had abandoned Mono, it is mostly an extension of Microsoft now (a bit like SUSE, which shows up in Microsoft sites because their goal is to tax GNU/Linux servers).

SUSE and Novell pretty much became what we foresaw and feared. Novell’s patents are in Microsoft’s hands now, SUSE serves no purpose other than taxing GNU/Linux for Microsoft, and Novell was not allowed to truly complete with Microsoft. AttachMSFT ensures that much of Novell’s proprietary portfolio is a dying breed. Mono became more closely tied and entangled with Microsoft. █

OpenSUSE 12.2 is officially dead now [1] and blogs begin to advertise a new release of the Microsoft-friendly (and funded) distribution, perhaps unknowingly helping Microsoft. One such site says that the new release is now offered in Microsoft-owned servers, demonstrating patent and control issues, not to mention privacy issues. Other reports mention SLE* (SUSE) [2] on Amazon, the CIA’s privacy-infringing special partner. This is the very opposite of what the GNU/Linux world should strive for. At the same time, Microsoft is “openwashing” its datacentre [3] and so does the Microsoft-owned (partially) Facebook [4,5], which is a censorship/surveillance company (users are the products, not the customers, and the business model is brainwashing them, also with pseudo “search” like Microsoft’s). Amazon has already shown us how “open” it is when it started paying Microsoft for GNU/Linux, deleted files (remotely) from people’s devices, and kicked out Wikileaks from its hosting plan at its most critical time (censorship). █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. openSUSE 12.2 Is Officially Dead

   The openSUSE Project has just announced that openSUSE 12.2 has reached end of life (EOL) and it will no longer be supported.

2. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server now available on AWS GovCloud

3. Microsoft open sources datacentre architecture, will other major providers follow suit?

   “These servers are optimized for Windows Server software and built to handle the enormous availability, scalability and efficiency requirements of Windows Azure, our global cloud platform. They offer dramatic improvements over traditional enterprise server designs: up to 40 percent server cost savings, 15 percent power efficiency gains and 50 percent reduction in deployment and service times,” Laing said.

4. Open Compute Project Takes on Converged Infrastructure, Saves Facebook $1 Billion

   The Open Compute Project officially got started in 2011 as a way to open up Facebook’s server designs and help the broader IT community — it’s an effort that is paying off for Facebook and many others too.

5. Facebook Saved Over A Billion Dollars By Building Open Sourced Servers

   Facebook is reaping the benefits of designing its own energy efficient servers. Today at the Open Compute Summit, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that “In the last three years alone, Facebook has saved more than a billion dollars in building out our infrastructure using Open Compute designs.”

Ubuntu and SUSE are too rather dumb projects (in their management) because they let Microsoft spy on their users and they use proprietary software like vBulletin in their forums, showing just how apathetic they are towards software freedom.

Last year Ubuntu Forums got cracked (no surprise, as it was proprietary software) and now it’s OpenSUSE Forums [1]. What do they have in common? Yes, proprietary software. It’s like Canonical’s mistake (leaking out passwords of users) did nothing to teach SUSE a lesson. vBulletin is a mess and it does almost nothing to guard passwords (which many people reuse across sites). In OpenSUSE’s case they say that only E-mails got leaked, but who knows if they’re honest…

What’s hard to grasp is why some companies continue to trust secret code and systems which earned no respect through independent audits.

In the next post we are going to share some of the latest revelations about the NSA. It is clear that back doors are often there by design, so it’s not a matter of whether or not a piece of proprietary software is secure, it’s a question of where there is a back door. See [2-5] below. The FBI requests that US companies make back doors and the NSA even bribes for it. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. openSUSE Forum Hacked, Everyday Linux, and Mageia RC Delay

2. More Security Experts Cancel Speech for RSA Conference

3. Infosec experts boycott RSA conflab over alleged ‘secret’ NSA contract

4. What It’s Like When The FBI Asks You To Backdoor Your Software

   At a recent RSA Security Conference, Nico Sell was on stage announcing that her company—Wickr—was making drastic changes to ensure its users’ security. She said that the company would switch from RSA encryption to elliptic curve encryption, and that the service wouldn’t have a backdoor for anyone.

   As she left the stage, before she’d even had a chance to take her microphone off, a man approached her and introduced himself as an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He then proceeded to “casually” ask if she’d be willing to install a backdoor into Wickr that would allow the FBI to retrieve information.

5. What The Intelligence Community Doesn’t Get: Backdoor For ‘The Good Guys’ Is Always A Backdoor For The ‘Bad Guys’ As Well

   Bruce Schneier, over at the Atlantic, recently made nearly the same point in talking about the massive costs of all of this NSA surveillance (as well as talking about the near total lack of benefits). There’s the cost of running these programs that are massive. There is the fact that these programs will be abused (they always are). There are the costs of destroying trust in various tech businesses (especially from foreign users and customers). But just as important is the fact that the NSA, FBI and others in the intelligence community are flat out weakening our national security by installing backdoors that malicious users can and will find and exploit:

Summary: A new OpenSUSE is out and it is in Microsoft’s Azure lock-in, helping Microsoft tax GNU/Linux while controlling it entirely

The Microsoft-funded SUSE gets integrated with Microsoft Azure following a lot of Azure openwashing. The VAR Guy says this may be part of a bigger battle, fought between Linux and Ballnux (Ballmer-taxed Linux). To quote his new article:

Red Hat and SUSE are shifting their old Linux battle to a new market: Big Data. Both open source companies made major Big Data statements this week, but they are attacking the market using completely different strategies. Here’s what channel partners need to know.

Techrights ignored the release of OpenSUSE this month. It ought to be remembered that the role of SUSE as a whole, now financially tied to Microsoft, is to normalise Microsoft ‘Linux tax’. This site was founded to oppose exactly that. █

Summary: Matt Asay writes about SUSE and despite its funding from Microsoft Asay is not too hopeful

A pro-Microsoft ‘news’ site asks, “Does SUSE Linux have a future”? He “cloudwashes” SUSE. This is from Asay of Novell, who had been interviewed for a job at Microsoft as well. Here are some numbers from SUSE and plans for an event. That’s about all we know about SUSE thse days. We hardly ever mention SUSE anymore. It’s dying on its own despite cash infusions from Microsoft, which hopes to use SUSE to tax GNU/Linux use. █

Summary: Patent tax on Linux is still far from dead, due to proxies of Microsoft

Several months ago (almost half a year) I started just simply ignoring all SUSE and OpenSUSE news, including stories of Microsoft patent tax coming through SLE*, but this one I could not just ignore because it’s posted in the OpenSUSE site and it says:

If thats the way of support we may experience in the future, I am forced to stop actively promoting the project.

Some sites which promoted the project for years sometimes still do so, but I could name a few which no longer cover it, or very rarely do. SUSE is now funded by Microsoft and the 'old Novell' still tries to get money from Microsoft for its abuses in the 90s. Here is the latest:

Novell has filed its opening appeals brief [PDF] in the Novell v. Microsoft antitrust litigation regarding WordPerfect.

Another company that turned from a controversial Linux contributor (NTFS driver) into a Microsoft taxman is Tuxera, which now offers several patent tax options for several platforms including Android. From its latest press release:

Tuxera comprehensive file systems portfolio for storage solutions and other embedded devices include Tuxera NTFS, Tuxera exFAT, Tuxera HFS+, and Tuxera FAT.

Those are Microsoft patent Trojan horses. Just like SUSE in its different ‘flavours’, these should all be avoided. For those who think that Apple file systems (HFS+) are benign, remember Apple’s patent aggression against Linux and consider this latest action which involves software patents:

In ongoing legal proceedings in California, Apple has added six new devices to its patent infringement claims against rival Samsung, getting them in late Friday evening ahead of a deadline on changes to the scope of the complaint. The new additions essentially cover just about every piece of Samsung hardware now available in the U.S. market, with modifications that also account for recent software updates.

We should reject every technology which is associated with Apple. This branding company clearly still wants war. Groklaw, which covered the above case better than anyone, has just received a sort of award and finished putting all the trial transcripts from Oracle vs. Google online:

I’m happy to tell you that we now have all the remaining trial transcripts from the Oracle v. Google trial, and you can find them all in the Oracle v. Google Timeline by date.

These attempts to tax Linux/Android using patents have been largely facilitated by the USPTO, but they are not successful yet, with the exception of Microsoft’s FAT patents. █

Summary: The Microsoft-funded SUSE will reportedly work with Microsoft to restrict the number of operating systems (or distributions) which can run on future hardware

BASED on some reports like this one, “Olaf Kirch of SUSE writes on the blog, “At the implementation layer, we intend to use the shim loader originally developed by Fedora – it’s a smart solution which avoids several nasty legal issues, and simplifies the certification/signing step considerably. This shim loader’s job is to load grub2 and verify it; this version of grub2 in turn will load kernels signed by a SUSE key only. We are currently considering to provide this functionality with SLE11 SP3 on fresh installations with UEFI Secure Boot present.””

“We are currently considering to provide this functionality with SLE11 SP3 on fresh installations with UEFI Secure Boot present.”
      –Olaf KirchWe criticised Red Hat for what it did [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] about UEFI and now we shall criticise the Microsoft-funded SUSE as well. They just never learn, do they? Pamela Jones helps remind us of what Microsoft does to so-called ‘partners’. To quote: “Novell has followed through, as it said it would, and has filed a notice of appeal in its litigation against Microsoft over antitrust issues from WordPerfect.”

Why does Novell run back into the same cave that had it devoured in the past? And why did SUSE not stand up to Microsoft? Or even opted for the Canonical approach (which is the lesser of the two evils)? SUSE does not even like Unity all that much. It seems not to follow Canonical’s footsteps. SUSE’s business model is to use Microsoft to take away from Red Hat while passing Microsoft a share of its gains.

As reports flood the Web with support from SUSE folks Red Hat will surely use SUSE’s choice to defend its own bad policy. Matthew Garrett, for example, writes: “There’s a post here describing SUSE’s approach to implementing Secure Boot support. In summary, it’s pretty similar to the approach we’re taking in Fedora – a first stage shim loader is signed with a key in db, it loads a second stage bootloader (grub 2) that’s signed with a key that’s in shim, the second stage bootloader loads a signed kernel. The main difference between the approaches is the use of a separate key database in shim, whereas we are currently planning on using a built-in key and the contents of the firmware key database.”

“In summary, it’s pretty similar to the approach we’re taking in Fedora…”
      –Matthew GarrettOpenSUSE has an anniversary, but coverage about the project is scarce. SUSE is planting some PR in Indian Web sites; that won’t change a thing. When you serve your competitor you lose credibility, especially when that competitor is a convicted monopolist. Debian has been on the good side in all this (supporting the FSF’s petition), but some minutes ago we learned that “GNU/Linux” is being removed from release names (scroll down to the list). █

“What we [Novell and Microsoft] agreed, which is true, is we’ll continue to try to grow Windows share at the expense of Linux. That’s kind of our job. But to the degree that people are going to deploy Linux, we want Suse Linux to have the highest percent share of that, because only a customer who has Suse Linux actually has paid properly for the use of intellectual property from Microsoft. And we took a quota, you could say, to help them sell so much Suse Linux. That’s part of the deal. We are willing to do the same deal with Red Hat and other Linux distributors, it’s not an exclusive thing. But after a few years of working on this problem, Novell actually saw the business opportunity, because there’s so many customers who say, ‘Hey look, we don’t want problems. We don’t want any intellectual property problem or anything else. There’s just a variety of workloads where we, today, feel like we want to run Linux. Please help us Microsoft and please work with the distributors to solve this problem, don’t come try to license this individually.’ So customer push drove us to where we got.”

–Steve Ballmer

Summary: New criticism of the Linux-hostile hardware layer measure which claims to improve security whilst in fact offering almost none

THE talented journalist Sam Varghese, a man who likes to dive deep into issues, says that “Microsoft is apparently unwilling to discuss the reasons behind its move to a so-called secure boot process for Windows 8, the next release of its operating system.”

He backs this assertion and shows that UEFI might be good for nothing but impeding GNU/Linux adoption. Linus Torvalds claims it's no good for security.

As another up-to-date release of OpenSUSE is expected, we remain without answers from the Microsoft-funded SUSE as to how it plans to cope with UEFI. This is going to be interesting to watch. █

Summary: The second RC of OpenSUSE 12.2 is out, but how many more releases are going to be made?

THERE are early signs that OpenSUSE will have a new release quite soon, with the second RC being out there in the wild.

After the latest deceitful PR from SUSE, aided by the Linux Foundation, we are saddened to see continued momentum (however small) for ‘Microsoft Linux’, so to speak. Some sites like Phoronix gave that coverage along with other SUSE sympathisers. To quote The H: “With the final version due in mid-September, the openSUSE developers have announced the second release candidate for version 12.2 of their Linux distribution. The two weeks since the first RC release have seen “a flurry” of last minute fixes in higher level packages as the core of 12.2 has been “stabilized and locked”. The focus now moves to final polish and fixes for release. One late change to the system has been the removal of many manuals and books from the DVD release of openSUSE to save space; a new “books” pattern can be installed separately for users who want them.”

Another SUSE sympathiser covered it but no large news sites. OpenSUSE does not matter so much anymore. █

Summary: New PR from SUSE seems dubious

SUSE, the Microsoft-funded and Microsoft-funding company that taxes GNU/Linux, has got some awkward new press release claiming leadership in Fog Computing. Someone from the Attachmate Group, promoting Microsoft tax through SUSE, accompanies the PR with this article:

But think of it this way: If you’re running a proprietary stack, you’re limited to the service providers that run on that single brand of infrastructure. If you need to mix and match, will your proprietary vendor be open to having the solution integrate with everything else? If you don’t have full support, then you’re opening up risks when the pieces don’t work together.

SUSE is sort of proprietary. It is hard to get SLE* source code, as we demonstrated several years ago. And also, it’s not free of charge. One must pay Microsoft. Here is an example of a writer who aided SUSE’s PR:

While much is written about the convergence of open source and cloud computing these days, including coverage of the trend here on OStatic, the usual players–OpenStack, CloudStack, Eucalyptus Systems, Red Hat–tend to dominate the headlines.

OpenSUSE blog posts have become quite rare, but here is one from hackweek:

The provisioning of a system is nothing new in SUSE Manager, so you might already be familiar with it. I stripped it down a bit, so the only option is to select the autoinstallation and to Create Cobbler System Record.

There are other improvements, but we no longer keep track of this project that openwashes SLE*. SUSE is gradually dying, but it is shameless with its PR. To claim leadership is to basically spin or lie. █

Summary: Red Hat plants a flag in Germany when SUSE loses momentum and status

SUSE, the only Microsoft-approved brand of GNU/Linux (because Microsoft is paid for its use), has been bragging about German deployments, as we noted quite recently (SUSE/Microsoft tax polluting HPC). In Germany, however, large companies still use Red Hat too. Red Hat sought to make it clear with a press release:

German manufacturing firm updates IT systems with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

Red Hat Inc., provider of open source solutions, has announced that Ferrotec, a vendor of technologies based on the magnetic liquid Ferrofluid used in multi-phase motors, dampers for shaft ends and transformer cooling, has deployed Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization at the core of its infrastructure. Through this Red Hat technology combination, Ferrotec is increasing scalability, flexibility and performance while lowering operating costs.

Headquartered in Japan, the Ferrotec Group also has a large presence throughout Europe. In line with the company’s growth and additional business requirements, its IT infrastructure expanded with the purchase of new servers and an increase in memory capacity. As the company’s IT systems peaked, performance began to decrease, creating the need for a modern technology infrastructure to meet Ferrotec’s business demands.

For many in Germany, SUSE is sometimes perceived as supporting the Germans; in reality, SUSE is supporting Microsoft. It is time to shun SUSE even in Germany. OpenSUSE has lost its edge anyway, and to make matters worse, it became an extension of Microsoft. █

“Asked how small software companies could compete on products that Microsoft wants to fold into Windows, [Microsoft COO Bob] Herbold told Bloomberg News they could either fight a losing battle, sell out to Microsoft or a larger company or ‘not go into business to begin with.’”

–Newsweek, March 1998

Summary: A quick look at SUSE at a time of crisis and face-saving RCs

THE NEWS about OpenSUSE reaching Release Candidate (RC) has travelled from the official site of OpenSUSE to SUSE-friendly outlets, a few exceptions, and sources that typically cover such SUSE news (owing to authors’ preferences). To quote: “Release Candidate for openSUSE 12.2 has just been released, taking one step closer to a stable release after the recent shake up”

“The project/product is facing real problems and the RC is no guarantee of technical quality.”To put things in context: “One month after openSUSE admitted it had a problem and was seeking a new direction, the first release candidate of openSUSE 12.2 is now available.”

There is also a response to Torvalds' rant about SUSE. To quote: “openSUSE team has announced the release of openSUSE 12.2 RC1 for testing. This release candidate gives us a glimpse of what openSUSE 12.2 will offer. There were some problems with Grub2 till the previous released, now it has been finally updated to Grub 2.0. The team has fixed the serial console support by respecting the console width. Its branding was also updated. There were fixes to udev, and to udisks and udisks2 to hide LVM RAID partitions, and many fixes came to autofs from an updated upstream patch.”

This hardly changes the fact that there are internal problems. The project/product is facing real problems and the RC is no guarantee of technical quality. There is no response to UEFI yet. █

Summary: A couple of updates about the ‘open’ version of Microsoft Linux

DESPITE delays and other pressing issues, SUSE will manage to squeeze out another release of the “open” alter-ego of SUSE — that which is being used to openwash Microsoft Linux. Here are some of the expected inclusions:

openSuse 12.2 will be released soon,or atleast we can hope so. Here is a list of upcoming features supposed to be shipped by default with the next version of this operating system.

In the desktop environment front, openSuse will ship KDE 4.8 Plasma Desktop and Plasma Netbook, the latest stable versions of K Desktop Environment. It may also ship Plasma Active, the Plasma UI for tablets and mobile phones. KDE apps and frameworks have also been upgraded to version 4.8 and one can expect better performance and stability in KDE. Talks of shipping a new KDM theme and ksplash theme is on, and kspalsh will use the qml engine, the latest technology in KDE 4.8.

KDE 4,9 is already approaching its final release and those who are comparing Fedora to OpenSUSE can appreciate that Fedora 18 will be ahead (Fedora is also released more often). As for Fedora 17:

I ran fedora 17 for a while on my test machine. I have since replaced that with opensuse 12.2 Beta2. Before my memory fades, here’s a comparison of fedora 17 and opensuse 12.2. When installing fedora from the DVD image, I chose to install KDE, Gnome, LXDE and XFCE. Those are the same choices that I make with opensuse. Of course, I don’t really use all of those. Mostly, I use KDE and experiment with the others. On my test machine, I use XFCE because it is a little lighter in weight for the older slower hardware.

[...]

Fedora defaulted to using gdm as the desktop login manager. When I logged into XFCE, I found that there was no gpg-agent available. If I checked to option launch Gnome services on startup, I would then have a gpg-agent available. However, that also caused orca to run, which soaked up a lot of resources. As a result, KDE used less resources than XFCE.

I disabled the “launch Gnome services” so that orca would not start. In looking at running processes, it seemed that gpg-agent was actually running but there was no environment setting to make that available. I was able to put something into shell startup files to locate that agent and set the environment correctly. And, since the shell startup files are run at the beginning of the desktop session, that made gpg-agent available to the desktop.

With opensuse 12.1, I recall that I also had to have XFCE launch Gnome services to have gpg-agent and/or ssh-agent available. But at least that did not start orca in opensuse. I have not tested that with opensuse 12.2, where launching gnome services appears to be the default.

I have not used SUSE in 5 years. Back in the days it was a leading distribution. These days, there is nothing “leading” about it and it relies on funding from Microsoft. Debian GNU/Linux is one people can trust much more. Our trust in Red Hat is eroding not just because of UEFI [1, 2, 3, 4] but for other reasons we’ll mention in the next post. █

Summary: Microsoft’s attack on booting freedom/openness has drawn different workarounds from different players; Microsoft continues bombarding the press with propaganda

THE UEFI debate has quieted down somewhat since the news from GNU/Linux distributors. The resultant controversy was enough for Microsoft to gain from, putting aside the effect on antitrust and GPLv3 (with software patents provisions), as we outlined quite recently. As The H put it, Canonical and Red Hat [1, 2, 3, 4] announced their plans and The Inquirer wrote:

Following Red Hat’s Fedora project announcing its plans to ensure that its Linux distribution will not fall afoul of Microsoft’s UEFI Secure Boot mechanism, Canonical has detailed how it plans on working with Microsoft’s ‘security feature’. The company will dispense with Grub 2, a Linux bootloader that it put significant work into, and modify Intel’s efilinux bootloader to add a menu interface.

Microsoft has managed to marginalise the GPLv3 using this devious scheme that helps security in no apparent way. As IDG noted, OpenSUSE, which is struggling internally, has not done anything yet:

Now that the Fedora Project and Canonical have proposed their own plans for their respective Fedora and Ubuntu distributions to work with the upcoming Secure Boot provisions in Windows 8-certified machines, it’s natural to wonder what openSUSE will be doing about the issue.

The answer for now seems to be unclear, and the reason may be one of openSUSE’s greatest strengths may be working against it.

Debian sidles with the FSF on UEFI protest and other distributions have said almost nothing on the subject. It was just the Linux Foundation, Canonical and Red Hat which said they would respond to it a few months ago.

Speaking of OpenSUSE, there are more delays as attendance or submissions might be slow to arrive:

New Deadline for openSUSE Summit papers to coincide with SUSECon’s Call for Papers, and more information about the Summit has been released

OpenSUSE is no longer a leading distribution, so we expect not so many people to get involved. SUSE and Microsoft are competing against free Linux and Red Hat, using Microsoft Linux (aka SUSE) as bait, taxing the competition as a whole and standardising this outrageous practice. Watch what Microsoft says about SUSE in the following new piece:

When we speak about partnering with the open source ecosystem, we mean to work a way forward. When we come to competing, we continue to compete with our open source competitors, says Mandar Naik, director, platform strategy, Microsoft India.

The piece if titled “Here Is Why Microsoft Is Warming Up To Open Source!” but it’s really about the Microsoft-funded SUSE and Microsoft Ganging Up Against (Gratis) Open Source. This fluff/puff piece is hard to read with a straight face, but the target audience is probably gullible people who could not care less about FOSS. It’s just a propaganda placement, portraying an abuser as a friend just like Bill Gates has been doing with a lot of puff pieces. As we shall show in the next post, Microsoft’s abuses are clear for some regulators to see. █

Summary: Concerns and advice from SUSE/OpenSUSE supporters highlight the present difficulties

THOSE who used to post OpenSUSE news no longer do so; there’s still some activity, but it’s minor. Muktware wonders what the future of OpenSUSE might hold. To quote:

openSUSE has been going through troubled waters. Being an openSUSE user myself, I have often been affected by the inconsistent infrastructure. In the past two-three months openSUSE servers have been facing one or the other problem. The last thing I would want is to not able to update, install of maintain my production machine. So, this inconsistency was bothering me. The good thing is openSUSE teams are not only aware of this problem, but also have started to find a permanent fix for it.

Unlike derivatives which don’t have to develop anything from scratch as they get all of their code ready-made from projects like Debian, distros like Fedora, which are ‘creating’ the technologies used by the rest of the GNU/Linux world, have to build everything from scratch. openSUSE also falls in the same category. So, they don’t get their stuff ready-made by someone else. This fact makes it hard for openSUSE to push two releases a year. So, one possibility to deal with the problem is longer release cycles so there is more time for developers to fix things.

We recently wrote about the meltdown, which caused delays despite a belated milestone.

One must remember that SUSE is advancing Microsoft tax, e.g. on SAP applications. Microsoft’s investment in SUSE was money well spent as it pays Microsoft in return. We call SUSE “Microsoft Linux” not purely as a joke. The project/product generally lacks identity and some in the community discuss the matter:

These changes raise a question from our own group of contributors. Is openSUSE at the height of this weave of stylistic changes? This question is not about code or software integration, but exclusively about the end user experience. Reasoning carefully, the answer would be “partially.” openSUSE has not taken full advantage of the branding capabilities provided by both KDE 4 and Gnome 3. This trend is more so surprising considering that openSUSE is the first to integrate and use many new Linux technologies through its unique OBS service, yet brand-wise we remain stagnant. Early adoption and fast integration in our distribution makes it harder to work on and maintain distribution specific styling.

The brand is stagnant in part because people recognise what SUSE means to GNU/Linux. It’s what Xandros and Linspire used to mean to it, but it’s actually worse. █

Summary: OpenSUSE makes its signs of distress public, probably for the first time in years

THE OPENSUSE project product wants to ignore the deal that SUSE signed with Microsoft, but the matter of fact is, Microsoft’s dollars help drive the project, ignoring past lessons of what Microsoft did to Novell (Pamela Jones can help remind them [1, 2, 3]).

Based on some reports about SUSE, there is a gathering in the pipeline:

Today, the most ambitious Free Software event of the Czech Republic officially opens registration! We’ve got an awesome event for you in store with sessions on all major subjects in Free Software and around it. Entry will be free of charge for everyone and we’ll give you 4 events AND a bonus track for that money! Read on to find out why you MUST be in Prague on October 20-23 2012.

Some of SUSE’s development had moved there before SUSE signed the deal with Microsoft (almost exactly one year ago). There are clearly signs of trouble and even SUSE sympathisers such as Swapnil Bhartiya are unable to deny it. He writes:

openSUSE seems to be going through some challenging times.

Here is a press report about it:

On top of these growing pains, there are other issues that afflict the openSUSE release process. The build service needed to create images is breaking down frequently, causing more delays. All of this has led to every milestone of openSUSE 12.2 having been delayed so far. Poortvliet and Kulow seem to agree that these delays are not temporary and are symptomatic of deeper problems within the project that need to be addressed.

With some influence and moles, it is no wonder that OpenSUSE goes south. They need to reorganise. Here’s more: “In the longer term some suggestions that seem to be getting positive nods are a project staging areas or forgetting releases and going to the rolling release model. But it’s all speculation at this point.”

The damage control from Stephan Kulow can be found here:

It’s time we realize delaying milestones is not a solution. Instead, let’s use the delay of 12.2 as a reason to challenge our current development model and look at new ways. Rather than continue to delay milestones, let’s re-think how we work.

As one magazine put it, the dev team is “soul searching” as a result and September 2012 is named as the target month. IDG commentary says the development model may be revised:

In an early-morning e-mail message from openSUSE Release Manager Stephan “Coolo” Kulow to the [opensuse-factory] mailing list, Kulow urged his fellow developers to “re-think how we work.” Among Kulow’s suggestions? Dumping the current release cycle schedule for openSUSE and moving to an annual or even unscheduled release system.

Factory is the development project for the openSUSE distribution of Linux, which is the community counterpart to the SUSE Linux Enterprise (SLE) product line.

Citing more delayed milestones than any other previous release, Kulow lamented that “every week I fight the same battle: Making sure that the mess generated by updates of random packages generates a working system. Very fortunately we have an increasing number of contributors that update versions or fix bugs in packages, but the end result gets worse.”

Here is more damage control:

But for openSUSE, the recent delay in the debut of version 12.2 is about more than simply pushing back a deadline. In Poortvliet’s words, the announcement, and other recent difficulties, are a signal that “we need to re-think how we’re working.”

The bottom line is, a sign of distress comes out of OpenSUSE. So far it has been rare, but several years ago OpenSUSE did seek donations because it had server issues. █

Summary: A short wave of calls to refrain from OpenSUSE promotion, which through the upstream is helping Microsoft, the sponsor

THE spreading of Microsoft file systems by Tuxera (‘little Novell’) has helped Microsoft tax Linux while Novell’s SUSE has the same effect on products or companies which foolishly go for this unnecessary option.

Muktware gives some lip service to OpenSUSE by speaking to the Project Manager of the Open Build Service (see this page), but the false supposition that helping OpenSUSE is not helping SUSE was recently shattered quite explicitly by Mr. Jaeger, whose words are interpreted as follows:

In a blog post today Jaeger explained some of the process of development at a commercial/community entity. He said that changes either come from the community edition and pushed upstream or done by the SLED team and pushed downstream. He also thinks it’s good practice to push all changes upstream and let them decide to use it or request changes.

In other words, praises like this one for OpenSUSE indirectly help the Microsoft-taxed distribution of GNU/Linux. People who say that helping OpenSUSE is not the same as helping SUSE (indirectly controlled by Microsoft) are simply not paying attention. █

Summary: SUSE makes it clearer that people on the payroll drive the OpenSUSE project

THE DOWNLOADS of OpenSUSE got halted and barely anyone noticed or cared. SUSE is now relying on paid advocates, or as one paid booster put it, “SUSE is hiring people for the Boosters team” (akin to AstroTurf).

Andreas Jaeger, one of the paid members, writes about changes that the community is not a part of (it does not vote on anything significant at SUSE) and says:

Why do we use the word “freight train” here? The openSUSE community consists of many different people – and some of them are able to work full-time on openSUSE, perhaps as part of a team of others. Those people might have a faster drive than others – and might “roll them over”. We’d like to avoid these situations and whenever they happen to help fixing.

In other words, SUSE recognises that paid employees of SUSE (with wages that partly come from Microsoft) call the shots. So much for a “community”…

It’s just a tool for creating Microsoft Linux. █